


Reverie

by blackcoffeeandteardrops



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 08:25:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13853847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackcoffeeandteardrops/pseuds/blackcoffeeandteardrops
Summary: Set several weeks past Ghouli. William starts getting visions of Scully again, and this time he goes to see her to find out what happened. Long overdue family time ensues.





	Reverie

The hospital smelled of antiseptic and the lights were too bright as William pushed through the automatic door and headed for the front desk. He darted his head left and right, thinking about the last time he’d been inside such a place, and how he’d had to make his escape. 

He was taking a risk being here, but if he closed his eyes he could see and practically feel the pain that had driven him here. It started the day before and it hurt so bad he’d had to pull his car off the road. He’d sat on the side of some highway, trying to keep his breathing steady as he saw flashes of his birth mother writhing in pain. There was blood and there was glass, and while he had minimum experience hearing her voice, he knew the scream that echoed through his head had been hers.

“Can I help you, son?” a nurse behind the desk asked. She peered at him above the rim of her glasses, noting the worry etched into his features. “Are you here to see someone?”

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat and fiddling with the zipper on his jacket. “I’m here to see Dana Scully,” he said, darting his tongue out to moisten his chapped lips. Her name sounded foreign coming from his mouth, and he cursed himself for not thinking ahead and disguising himself to onlookers. If he were to get captured at this juncture before even getting the chance to see her, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. 

The nurse nodded, tapping a few keys before frowning at her computer screen. “Currently this patient is listed as immediate family only, so unless--”

“Yes, we are. She’s my mother,” he replied. His pulse kicked up a few notches. While it wasn’t the first time he’d referred to her as such, it still felt so strange to say. The woman who’d taken him in and raised him as her own was dead now, which was something that he still struggled to process, but if there was anything he could do to save the mother he so badly wanted to know, he wanted to try.

The nurse offered him a look of sympathy before pointing to an elevator bank to the right and giving him directions of where to go, and he bolted off before she could even finish speaking.

It crossed his mind as he waited for the correct floor that he wasn’t even sure of what to say upon seeing her. He didn’t even know exactly what had happened, just that she’d been hurt and that while the pain had decreased, it still existed. She still had discomfort, and while he didn’t know if it was safe, he wanted to know why. He walked past a nurses’ station and struggled to keep his breathing level, thinking of how he’d hidden behind one before disguising himself and running for safety. 

She’d been there, he realized, wanting to make sure he was okay, and like a coward he ran. His pace slowed as he reached the correct hallway and he looked for the right room number. He found it and paused, turning his head over his shoulder, almost finding it hard to believe that he hadn’t been followed. He gripped the door handle with one hand while wiping the other on his jeans. Counting to five, he opened the door and stepped inside, not breathing until she came into sight.

She was sleeping and appeared more at peace than what he’d been picturing the whole way to the hospital, though clearly she was not one hundred percent okay. Her red hair, the hair he’d seen so many times in visions and dreams, was fanned out across the crisp white of the pillow case and her hands lay folded atop her stomach. There was a device clipped to one of her fingers and another was taped to her hand. He followed the tube and watched as liquid slowly dripped from an IV bag. There was a bandage taped to her forehead and a nasty bruise on one cheek. The nurse had told him immediate family only, so the news couldn’t be good, but as he pulled a chair closer to the bed he reminded himself that he was immediate family, even if neither of them had known that for very long.

“I don’t know if you can hear me,” he said, forcing the words out as he cleared his throat. He thought of the words she’d said when she believed him to be dead, how she’d all but made the morgue her private confessional, and wondered how much of it she might have said had he been awake. He imagined for a second what would’ve happened had he opened his eyes, pretended not for the first time that he’d started talking back to her. Even in sleep, the woman before him was a source both of curiosity and comfort for him. “But if you can, uh...you should wake up. It’s me. Jackson. Or, well, I guess you know me as William,” he said, laughing to himself, thinking it absurd to be talking to someone who remained asleep. “And maybe, maybe William is who I am. Or who I’m supposed to be. And maybe that’s why I’m here. For you to help me figure that out. Or to have someone help--”

“I can help with that,” a voice sounded behind him, causing William to jump. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” the man said, gripping the door handle as if it were the only thing keeping him standing. In his free hand he held a styrofoam coffee cup from the cafeteria, and with it he pointed to her lying in the bed. “How is she?”

“Good, I think,” William replied, watching lines on a machine to his left. He knew enough from articles he’d read and movies he’d seen to know it was monitoring her heart, but not enough to understand what the lines meant. He watched the steady rise and fall of her chest, and wondered if she’d stared at his body in the morgue and wished for the same thing to happen. “Honestly, I don’t know,” he continued, turning to look back at the man. He’d heard his voice before, the last time he’d been at the hospital. He’d also been the one to comfort his mother, to hold her through what they thought was the pain of losing him. He was her partner, her husband, that much William suspected, but there was something itching in his mind that whispered there was more to the story. 

“How did you get here?” the man asked, his eyes risking a glance at her before looking back at him. “You’re okay?”

William watched as he slowly shut the door without breaking his gaze and studied the practiced way he gripped the cup, as if he needed something to do with his hands. He’d seen this man before, in the dreams, although not as much as his mother. But even when he hadn’t seen him, William supposed he’d felt him. He’d been the one to catch his mother when she fell, or comfort her with soothing words whenever the visions got to be too much. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head as he lowered it towards the floor.

“What on earth do you have to be sorry for?” he asked, reaching out and touching his shoulder.

“I drove,” William replied, only then realizing he hadn’t answered his questions. “I know it’s crazy, and maybe it doesn’t make sense, but--”

“You saw it happen, didn’t you?” he asked, carefully perching himself on the side of the bed, rather than the chair across the room. 

William nodded, surprised that he’d been so easily figured out. When he looked at him, rather than judgement or curiosity, he saw something kin to understanding. He’d been figured out, at least partially, and the man hadn’t even been in the room five minutes. While he knew they were government agents, he couldn’t shake the feeling that it was more than that. “You’re him, aren’t you?”

The man opened his mouth and closed it again, a move which amused William for a reason that he couldn’t explain. Though he didn’t know him well if at all, he didn’t strike him as someone who was easily left speechless. There had been no grand introduction, but it was evident by the casual way he’d reacted upon finding William in his mother’s hospital room that he knew who William was. “Fox Mulder, with the federal bureau of--”

“You know that’s not what I mean,” William replied, sighing in frustration. The name was normally something he’d have commented on, and it struck something in the back of his mind, suggesting he’d seen or heard it before, but there were more pressing matters at hand. “She’s my birth mother,” he said, cocking his head in the direction of the bed. “Which makes you--”

“Yes,” Mulder replied, the word coming out in a rush of air from his lips. His eyes scanned William’s features, but rather than sizing him up, he seemed to be assessing him for any sign of injury. “You’ve been safe?” he asked. 

“I have, yeah,” William replied, crossing his arms as he settled deeper into the chair, the pleather of the seat squeaking in protest. He didn’t suppose chairs like this were meant for sitting for long periods of time. He cast his eyes downward and shook his head. “But I guess...I guess you know what it is I can do. I can make people see things, you know?” he asked, surprising himself as he felt tears stinging his eyes. “Anyway, I wanted to come here and see for myself that she was okay. I saw it happen, and it was loud and scary, and I wasn’t thinking. I just rushed in. I didn’t disguise myself at all. The nurse saw me, like five more saw me on the way here. What if those guys from last time are still after me? I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of what I did.”

“William,” Mulder said, shaking his head as if trying to convince himself this was all real. He glanced back at door, watching as a nurse wheeled a patient by before returning his focus back to the situation at hand. “You don’t have to worry about that. At least not alone. Once she wakes up, we’ll figure all of this out.”

A full minute slowly passed with nothing more than the sounds of the machines attached to his mother and the ticking of the wall clock to break the silence. They’d both turned their attention back to her, waiting for the most minute signs of change. William realized that Mulder--his father, he thought--had spoken with such certainty, not just about her waking up, but about what would happen afterward. He remembered catching a glimpse of him, confidently strolling out of the gas station, oblivious to what had just taken place, and he felt a pang of guilt at not sticking around long enough to speak to him just as he had with his mother. “What happened?” he asked. “You don’t look hurt, so you weren’t with her, were you?”

Mulder shook his head, a bittersweet smile crossing his features. “I was following up on a lead with a potential suspect in a case. Scully was on her way to meet me for lunch, but a driver was going well over the speed limit and wasn’t watching where they were going. They collided with the driver’s side of her car,” he stopped, gingerly reaching for Scully’s hand atop the blanket. He swallowed, his throat growing tight as his thumb traced lines against her knuckles, his eyes honed in on her as he continued to speak. “You said you saw it happen?”

“I did,” William replied, tucking one leg under him on the seat. He thought he saw a flicker of movement under her eyelids, but Mulder appeared not to notice, so he remained silent, for fear of getting his hopes up. “Well, flashes of it, I guess. I could see her trying to swerve. I could hear the glass breaking. That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?”

“Kid, you might be a lot of things, thanks in large part to me and Scully here, but crazy isn’t one of them,” Mulder replied, shaking his head. “Scully,” he continued, giving her hand a gentle squeeze, as if willing her back to consciousness were that simple. 

William was sizing Mulder up, taking in the dark hair and the bushy eyebrows, and was studying the profile of his nose to decide if it looked at all like his own, when he heard a subtle coughing rattling from the bed. “Is she waking up?” he asked, his question being answered just a moment later when he watched her blue eyes open and close again, before opening once more, narrower this time against the flourescent hospital lights. “Shouldn’t we get a doctor?” 

“Yes,” Mulder replied, reluctantly letting go of Scully’s hand. “Scully? Scully, can you hear me? Do you know where you are?”

Scully cautiously brought a hand up to her forehead, her fingertips ghosting across the gauze pad that was taped there. “The hospital,” she said, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “There was an accident. I tried to stop, but I couldn’t.”

“I know you couldn’t,” Mulder replied, his eyes anxiously shifting from her to William, who as yet had gone unnoticed by her. “Scully, I’m going to get a doctor to come in here and check you out. But in the meantime, you have a visitor,” he said, quietly standing and moving towards the door. 

William remembered a time when he was about seven or eight, before all of the doctors and tests and medications designed to make him “normal”. They’d gone shopping and just as they joined the check out line, his mom had realized she’d forgotten to grab something, so she asked him to hold their place, telling him she wouldn’t be long. He remembered gripping the cart, slowly pushing it closer to the conveyor belt, thinking that at any second it would be his turn and that he wouldn’t know what to do or say. Looking back at the bed, he saw his mother’s blue eyes staring at him in surprise, and he knew that shopping trip had been nothing compared to this. 

Scully’s fingers gripped the blanket and she blinked a few times, certain at first she had to be imagining things. How many times in recent weeks had she falling asleep wishing for this exact moment? “You’re here.”

William nodded, curling one half of his mouth into a smile. “I guess I could’ve picked better circumstances, huh?”

Her eyes clouded with tears and she tried pushing herself up in bed, only to be met with pain as she tried to move. Before she could process what was happening, he was at her side, carefully moving the pillow just slightly, giving her head better support. She reached out, gingerly grasping the worn fabric of his jacket, and found herself nearly shocked when the image before her didn’t dissipate into thin air. “You’re here now. That’s what matters.”

“Better late than never,” he mused, and watched as she winced, but before he could determine if she was in pain or if his words had been the cause, Mulder came back through the door with an older man in a lab coat in tow. Reluctantly, he moved back, watching as the doctor used a flashlight on her eyes, asking her to follow it. He watched as the doctor checked the monitors and asked her a few questions, feeling helpless until he felt Mulder’s hand settling upon his shoulder. He’d come to see his mother, but his father had just as much been a question mark in his life, and he was eager for the doctor to leave so they could get back to the matters at hand. 

Mulder didn’t want to admit that he’d reached out and placed a hand on William’s shoulder to reassure him just as much as he’d done it to feel physical proof.The son that he and Scully had wondered about and mourned like a living ghost for so long was living and breathing and in the same room, and he was filled to the brim with questions, but he willed himself to remain calm. He watched as the doctor performed a routine battery of tests, thinking of the times over the years he’d watched these same tests being performed. This time was different, and he knew that. The whole ordeal seemed to take longer than he felt it should, but soon the doctor left the room, saying he was going to be ordering some tests including a scan and that the nurses would be in soon to assist with that.

“How are you feeling?” William asked, beating Mulder to the punch. 

“Like I’ve been hit by a truck?” Scully asked, surprising herself by how lighthearted her tone was. She studied her son’s face, finding it impossible to not recall the last time she saw him, the image burned into her brain. As she watched William, he appeared to shrug in apology, a move which she knew full well came from Mulder. “How are you?”

William stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans as he rocked back on his heels. “I’ve been better, I guess.”

Scully's eyes darted between father and son, noting their postures like mirror images of one another. She laughed, despite herself, and blinked back tears. “I saw you coming here.”

William heard the sharp intake of breath coming from Mulder at his side. He’d wondered as he pushed his foot on the gas pedal, glancing in the rearview every few minutes for any sign of flashing lights, how the whole vision thing worked. It wasn't the first time the question crossed his mind, but as he'd drawn closer to the hospital he'd wondered if she were able to sense he was on his way, and if so if it would have been a source of comfort. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay. I saw the crash,” he said, shifting at the last second to look at Mulder. “The guy that hit her car. What happened to him?”

The protective tone of William's voice caught Mulder off guard, but he welcomed it and he knew Scully did as well. Their son was compassionate to others, he thought, quietly shelving that fact away to dissect later. “He was assessed in the ER but wasn't admitted. From the last reports I was given, he's being held at the station. Charges were pending, considering--” he said, swallowing how the sentence would've ended. He didn't want to voice his fears about what might've happened outloud. Leveling his gaze at Scully, he nodded, as if confirming for himself that things were okay. “Do you need water? An extra blanket?”

Scully shook her head, the pillowcase crinkling beneath her. Mulder was nervous, and she supposed he had every right to be. They had been in countless hospital rooms for each other over the years, but the fact William was now also present was downright surreal. The two hadn't moved from their position near the door since the doctor had assessed her, so she pointed to the chair at her side. “Can you two sit down?”

Mulder dragged the chair that had been sitting across the room over and sat by the opposite side of the bed of William. Once seated, he tapped his fingers against the arm rest, willing either of them to say something. 

William picked at his thumb nail and resisted the urge to bite it, thinking of how when he’d been younger his parents--his adoptive parents, he thought, though there was no sadness behind it--had urged him not to. Outside, the loudspeaker echoed, paging someone to the nurses’ station. He heard a laugh as two nurses walked down the hall. If he closed his eyes, he could picture the nurse at the front desk, typing away on her keyboard, stopping only when the phone rang. Inside the room felt different. It was calm and quiet, but somehow not stifling. The three of them sat in silence, and even if that silence was loaded, he didn’t sense anything uncomfortable about it. Someone else walked down the hall, and he wondered what a passerby might think if they looked through the window and saw the three of them huddled together like figurines in one of his snowglobes. He shifted, feeling the weight of the object in his pocket, and he fished his hand in to pull it out. “Here, I got something for you.”

“What is it?” Scully asked, surprised as William settled an object wrapped in tissue paper in her hand. She held onto it gingerly, testing the weight, although it wasn’t heavy. 

William shrugged, tapping his foot against the linoleum floor. He pushed the hair from his eyes and sighed. “The last one broke. The...stuff leaked out. I had to stop for gas on the way here and I saw it, so I wanted to get you a new one.”

Scully carefully unwrapped the bundle in her hands and stared at the snowglobe that, while not a perfect match to the other that had cracked, still boasted a windmill standing tall, this time amidst a field of what appeared to be sunflowers. She shook the globe and watched as gold glitter slowly floated to the bottom underneath the glass. Smiling, she fought the lump she felt growing in her throat, and she held the gift tight enough to feel the plastic of the base biting into her palm. She didn’t want to tell him that she’d superglued the other one back together as soon as she got home and that it held a proud position on her shelf. “You didn’t have to get me anything. You being here--” she paused, words falling flat against her lips. What could she possibly say that would be enough to convey what she was feeling? She waved the snowglobe in William’s direction, watching as it sparkled under the overhead lights. “Thank you.”

Mulder sat back in his seat, watching in amazement at the exchange. That his son could be so thoughtful caused a certain sense of pride to swell in his chest, though it was also coupled with sadness at not having been the one to teach him such things. Still, the story Scully had told him about meeting the stranger who felt familiar and who she later realized was William in disguise had left him curious. “How do you do it?” he asked, propping his chin up with one hand. “Make people see what you want them to?”

“Mulder--” Scully said, darting her head in his direction and instantly regretting it. A stab of pain emanated from her neck and she closed her eyes, focusing on her breathing until she felt the sharpness subside to a dull ache. She didn’t have to look up to know they’d both be focused on her. 

“Scully, are you alright?” Mulder asked, flitting his fingertips across her wrist. The machines monitoring her would have sounded had there been cause for alarm, but he wanted to know for himself. With his free hand, he moved the hair from her face, not breaking away until she carefully nodded in the affirmative. 

“I’m okay,” she nodded, capturing one of his hands in hers, pressing a kiss to his palm before lacing their fingers together.

“Wait,” William said, shaking his head as threads started connecting together and synapses started firing off in his brain. He looked back up at them, quickly shifting his focus from one to the other, trying to conjure up images from files he’d seen. His adoption had been closed, and for whatever reason, no amount of prodding or attempts at hacking into the files had been able to change that. But when his life had taken a turn and the visions had started, when he’d realized it wasn’t all just happening inside his head, he’d taken to the internet to see if he was alone, or if there might be others who shared similar experiences. “You guys are FBI agents, yeah?” he said, speaking slowly. He’d stumbled across the files by accident and he wasn’t completely certain of their authenticity even now. But the names had itched something in his mind, stirred memories that had been quietly shelved for later dissection, and now he realized he’d been sitting in the room with the two people who could confirm or deny their accuracy. “You investigate the X-Files?”

“Yes,” Mulder replied, feeling like he got caught doing something he shouldn’t. William hadn’t just hacked the DOD, but had also apparently done the same thing to the FBI. There was a look of fear on Scully’s face, there and gone in an instant, but he had to admit he felt a little proud. Still, there were things they had gone through and seen that he’d never want his son to endure. “You found the files? What did you read?”

William shrugged and shook his head, one side of his mouth drooping down in disappointment. “A lot of important stuff was redacted, I guess. But uh,” he said, pulling his lip between his teeth as he pulled case details from his mind. While he didn’t have a photographic memory, it was pretty close. He wondered if that came from them. “The things you guys did? It all seems crazy. I mean, you went up against a vampire?” he asked, his voice incredulous.

“No,” Scully said, groaning as Mulder replied in the affirmative. “Mulder, you don’t know that he was a vampire. And besides, all of that was forever ago.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that he was a vampire, Scully. You know, maybe that’s where my distrust of pizza guys originates from,” Mulder replied with a laugh, feeling lighter than he had in a long time. 

William watched the exchange with amusement. These two seemed so in tune even when they disagreed. While his parents had gotten along, it wasn’t uncommon to hear them arguing from time to time. Although, he thought, most of their fighting had a lot to do with him. One of them wanted to put him in counseling and the other wanted to sweep events like him seeing things he couldn’t possibly see or moving things he shouldn’t under the rug. If you don’t see it, it’s not real, they’d said, and for a while he’d been prone to believe them. No amount of diazepam or therapy had healed him, and it was only recently that he’d come to realize it was all for a reason. He tuned back into the conversation at hand, listening as they debated facts of cases long ago, and he got the impression this was something they did often.

“William, listen, I do have to caution you...as I’m sure you’re aware, you do have to be careful of the things you read on the internet,” Scully said, bringing him back into the loop, all the while unaware of how maternal she sounded. “While most of what you read is probably true, people can use you for the information you know. And, as you’re also aware, can use you for the things that you can do. You need to be careful.”

“I know,” William replied. Her concern for him was palpable, and he felt a little overwhelmed by it. Having been on his own for weeks, today was the longest time he’d spent around other people, let alone ones who despite not having raised him felt so much for him. He recalled the files, summoned further details from his memory, and glanced at Mulder through his lashes. “Your middle name is William.”

Mulder drew a breath in slowly through his teeth. “It is,” he said, slightly unnerved that William would know that, although he supposed the internet held plenty of details people might not want to make public. “If you were to peruse our family trees, you’d find it’s practically a family tradition.”

Family. The word caused a pool of warmth to spread through William’s chest and caused his pulse to quicken. For so long, he thought he knew what it meant, but now everything that had happened had caused him to bring his definition into question. 

“We don’t have to call you that if it makes you uncomfortable,” Scully said, reaching out to give his hand a squeeze. She could’ve keeled over when he gave her hand a squeeze back, had she not already been lying down. “If you prefer Jackson, or anything else, that’s okay.”

William thought about throwing out some name that held little significance to anyone, or maybe throwing out a name that might be absurd to call someone, but decided against it. His father’s name was Fox, after all, so he supposed anything was possible with these two. “No, it’s fine,” he said. “But, uh, what am I supposed to call you guys? You call each other Mulder and Scully instead of your first names. Why is that?”

He said it so nonchalantly, as if he planned on sticking around, a fact which gave Scully pause. Of course she wanted him to stay, albeit these might not be perfect circumstances, but she wanted to be sure it was still his choice. She looked up and, seeing his eyes on her, realized they hadn’t answered his question. “It’s just what’s worked for us. We worked together for a long time as partners before…” she paused, feeling her cheeks blush. Speaking about such things with their son present seemed so strange, but she supposed he was old enough to understand what she was getting at. “I suppose you could say it just stuck. But as for what you call us--” she glanced at Mulder who nodded, silently agreeing with what he knew she planned to say. “Whatever you feel comfortable with. We want you to feel safe here. Okay?”

“But if you choose Mulder, just don’t put Agent before it. That would be weird,” Mulder said, relieved when William laughed at the joke. He’d made their son laugh. After everything they’d been through, he figured they could all deserve to lighten up a bit. He opened his mouth to suggest they find something to watch, only to hear the door open and see a nurse enter. Radiology was ready for some scans, she said, and Scully reluctantly let go of his hand as they prepared her for transport. He watched as she cradled the hand William had held, the slightest hint of a smile crossing her face, and it disappeared only as they began wheeling her to the door. “What is it?”

“Just,” Scully said, craning her neck see William. She didn’t want to admit it, but despite the conversation they’d been having and the fact he’d clearly intended to stay, she was afraid to let him out of her sight. “Will you wait here?”

“Yeah, sure,” William agreed. Her reluctance to leave was obvious, and as he watched them make their way through the door, he felt a sense of panic bubble up in his chest. Earlier, he’d been afraid that he might be spotted. But he’d come into the hospital as himself and had managed to pass through security just fine, and even if he were to be caught, he felt confident enough he could escape if he needed to. If it was even necessary, he thought, because he realized he’d yet to ask if that was even a concern. He’d been out of the loop since he left town, and he hoped Mulder and Scully--his mother and father, who may or may not have once been responsible for killing an actual vampire--could catch him up on things. “Or I could come with you?” he asked, his voice shaking just slightly as he stood to join them. “I mean, if that’s okay.”

The nurse nodded and pushed the door open wide, incognizant of how she was playing a small part in a family reunion in the making. “Sure. But you’ll have to wait with your dad outside the radiology suite. Are we ready?”

“You cool with that?” Mulder asked. It wasn’t like they’d be downstairs for long, and if said no he could also just wait in Scully’s hospital room, but he wanted to be as close to the two of them as he could, and both of them waiting for her seemed like a good way to do it.

“Sure, yeah,” William replied. The relief coming from both of them nearly felt tangible, but as he watched the nurse move to wheel Scully through the doorway, he didn’t feel like she noticed. He thought again of how the three of them had been encased in a figurative snow globe within the hospital room, and as they loaded into an elevator, he knew the glass of that globe had been cracked open enough for some of the stuff to leak out and for other things--people, he mused, even though the nurse seemed nice--to get inside. Still, he felt the solid weight of Mulder on one side and could reach out and touch Scully on the other, and knew without asking that something was different. The outside world was butting in and he felt strangely protective of what remained inside. He didn’t know what the future held for any of them, but they were together, and he hoped more than he expected to that they would all be just fine.


End file.
